Frank shook his head. His smile was tinged with sadness.
"I don't seem to feel that way either," he said slowly. "I don't seem to feel any one owes me anything. Maybe I did a while back, but I don't now."
"Not even Hendrie?"
Frank shook his head seriously.
"Least of all—Hendrie. I rather fancy he's been paid all he can bear for what he did to me."
Leyburn sighed with pretended sympathy.
"You're a good boy," he said kindly. "Too good for the hard knocks life likes handing around. Maybe you'll get—compensation. However," he went on, sitting up, and assuming a business-like alertness, "we've got to put this business through. We've got to make these people give a fair wage to their workers, a wage that will leave them a margin of comfort and happiness in a dreary sort of life. Nigger labor is cutting them out, and it can't be tolerated. We're not out to injure these employers. By God, we're not! We're out with as good a purpose by them as any church parson. That's what I can't get folks to see. Our methods may be rough, but the end justifies it. They are our only ways of doing it. I tell you, boy, in this fight we are having, of man against himself—and that's what it amounts to—we have got to put all sentiment aside. Our duty lies clear before us. And when the war is over, Hendrie, and all men like him, will be the first to see the righteousness of our cause—and thank us. We take out a tooth, boy, because it aches, and it is painful to do it, but it leaves us with everlasting peace. You don't feel you can do this work I want you to do? Well, I won't press it. But"—he turned a sidelong glance upon the other's ingenuous face, now so expressive of the struggle going on within his simple mind—"but I think the teaching for Hendrie would have come well from you. Yes, it surely would." He smiled. "Good for evil, eh? And it is for his good. It is almost a duty—feeling as you do. He is a good man, but—passionate. And his passions run away with him. Seems to me it would be good to point the right road to him. Then, too, you understand his kind. S'pose I threw a hard-shouting, leather-lunged hobo at him—we wouldn't get so good a result. Not by a lot. It would be doubling the risk of trouble. Well, where would you like to work—instead?"
Frank rose from his seat and began to pace the room. Leyburn silently watched him. The smile behind his eyes was well hidden. He knew his man. He felt it to be hard work persuading him, but it was worth while.
At last Frank abruptly came to a stand before him.
"I'll do the work," he cried, with a gulp. "I tell you, Leyburn, I'd rather do anything else, but I—I believe, as you say, it's my duty to do this. Yes, I'll go, and I'll do my very best. But I warn you, if trouble threatens Mrs. Hendrie, directly or indirectly, I'll do my best to help her, if all labor in the world has to suffer for it."